Going beyond 2% CSR: The institutions India needs for a Viksit Bharat

India - and its leading business houses - must go beyond mere CSR spending to build enduring institutions that strengthen governance, improve execution, and unlock large-scale social impact across sta

Imagine a young girl named Seema. She is born to a mother who received little support during pregnancy. She enters school undernourished, faces irregular teaching and outdated curricula, and eventually drops out. Married young, she becomes a mother herself, repeating the same cycle of deprivation in health, education, and nutrition. Seema’s story is not an exception. It reflects a structural failure that still shapes the lives of millions of Indians.

 

India today stands at an extraordinary inflection point. As the country moves toward the vision of Viksit Bharat by 2047, the Union and state governments together deploy more than $500 billion annually across education, healthcare, agriculture, rural development, social protection, and climate transition. Ambition is unprecedented. Yet, outcomes remain uneven.

 

 

Learning levels continue to lag despite rising education budgets. Primary healthcare systems remain stretched even as coverage expands. Welfare schemes reach millions, yet delivery gaps persist. The central challenge of India’s development is no longer policy design. It is execution capability.

 

Between policy and the citizen lies the architecture of implementation: district education officers, chief medical officers, block development officers, panchayat leaders, and frontline workers. These middle managers form the backbone of India’s public service delivery system. Their capability determines whether policy becomes progress.

 

Yet, leadership training for this layer of governance remains limited. Data systems are underutilised. Procurement processes remain compliance-driven rather than outcome-oriented. Technical talent is scarce. In effect, the Indian state is often expected to deliver enterprise-scale outcomes without enterprise-grade managerial architecture. This is where corporate India can play a transformative role.

The Unfinished Promise of the 2% CSR Mandate

When India introduced the two per cent Corporate Social Responsibility mandate, it made a remarkable policy choice.

 

The government could have raised additional revenue through taxation. Instead, it invited corporate India into the nation-building process.

 

Implicit in that decision was a deeper expectation: that corporations would bring capabilities the public sector often struggles to institutionalise, managerial discipline, digital platforms, supply chain optimisation, and performance management.

 

In practice, however, CSR spending has largely gravitated toward asset creation and programmatic funding.

 

Companies build hospitals, renovate schools, and sponsor health camps. These interventions create local impact and deserve recognition. But they often operate alongside public systems that remain structurally unchanged.

 

A corporate house may spend crores building infrastructure that the state could build more economically itself. Tax revenue is forgone and capital is deployed, yet institutional capability within the system remains largely untouched. The deeper promise of CSR to embed corporate capability into public systems remains largely unrealised.

Corporate Capability Can Strengthen Governance

Indian business houses have built some of the most sophisticated enterprises in the world. They manage complex supply chains across continents. They build digital platforms serving hundreds of millions. They deploy capital with precision and create performance cultures that reward execution. These capabilities have transformed sectors from telecom and refining to retail and manufacturing.

 

Yet corporations today lack a structured pathway to embed these competencies within government systems. Engagements often remain episodic. Pilot projects struggle to scale. Advisory initiatives fade with leadership transitions. Corporate India has the expertise. Government has mandates and scale. What India lacks is a permanent institutional bridge between the two.

Enduring transformations in India

ISRO built India’s space programme. The IITs and IIMs created generations of engineers and managers. They were institutions designed to build capability across decades.

 

India has created remarkably few institutions dedicated to strengthening leadership within public systems, especially in high-poverty regions. If a 100 schools educate thousands of students, a leadership institution can transform ‘how’ 50,000 schools function. If 10 hospitals treat thousands of patients, one systems institution can improve ‘how’ an entire state’s health network operates.

Lessons from Piramal School of Leadership

A decade ago, we tested this idea in Rajasthan through the Piramal School of Leadership, established on a 13-acre campus in Jhunjhunu to strengthen leadership within government systems.

 

Once the institution existed, something remarkable happened. It became possible to bridge the gap between government systems and the communities they serve. Leadership training, data-driven governance, and collaborative problem solving began to unlock capability within the system itself. Rajasthan went on to move to Rank 2 and Jhunjhunu went on to achieve Rank 1 in learning outcomes in 2019.

 

Today, this effort is being scaled through a 32-acre campus in Jaipur, with the capacity to train 50,000 government middle managers annually. The lesson is clear: Institutions multiply impact.

The Missing Institution

India now needs a new category of institution.

 

Public Systems Leadership Institutes, established in every state, can anchor the transformation of governance in health, education, and nutrition.

 

Think of them as IIT-scale assets for governance. Such institutions would build leadership capacity across the government machinery while serving as platforms where corporate managerial expertise, digital systems, performance architecture, and operational discipline, can be embedded into public service delivery.

 

Designed on 50–100 year endowment-backed models, these institutes could become long-term capability backbones for their states.

 

Working deeply with selected districts, they could train tens of thousands of public leaders each year while developing replicable governance models that improve outcomes for millions of citizens.

District Archetype Approach

India cannot achieve developed nation status amid widening regional asymmetry.

 

Draw a vertical line across the map of India and two realities emerge. One side reflects accelerating economic growth. The other, stretching across eastern and central India, continues to struggle with multidimensional and multi-generational poverty.

 

India’s districts vary widely: tribal regions, left-wing extremism-affected districts, aspirational districts, and rapidly urbanising belts facing migration pressures. A district archetype approach allows tailored governance solutions that can be replicated across similar contexts rather than imposing one-size-fits-all models.

Legacy for Indian Business Families

Every great industrial house ultimately builds institutions that endure beyond its founders, hospitals that preserve life, universities that shape generations, and cultural landmarks that anchor national identity.

 

If even five major Indian business families were to anchor one such institution each, adopting a state and working across district archetypes, the cumulative impact could accelerate human development within a single generation. The contribution would far exceed what the government might have collected through an additional two percent tax. Building such institutions may be the most consequential contribution corporate India can make to the journey toward Viksit Bharat.

 

I am currently building one such institute dedicated to public systems leadership. I hope other Indian business families will build theirs. Because if we succeed, millions of girls like Seema will inherit a very different future. 

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(The author is Chairman, Piramal Group)  (Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper)